Scarlet and Raven
by Gabriel Seraph
Summary: Betrayed and tortured by the Red Queen, Will Scarlet is set free by the Rabbit and brought to a magical world where nothing is as it seems - 21st-century America. There, he meets the mysterious Alice Kingsleigh, and prepares to return to Wonderland to exact his revenge on the dreaded Queen. AU, torture scenes, bloody hilarity, Will/Alice and Ana/Cyrus - at least one lemon each!
1. Chapter 1

AN: Reader, if you find things wrong with this story, anything at all, please tell me. That's all I will say on that subject.

Also, if you haven't started watching _Once Upon A Time In Wonderland_ yet, start immediately, because it is by far the most criminally underrated new show since _Alcatraz. _Trust me on this, it will hook you right from the start, bad romance, bad CGI and all.

Science? I don't need no stinking science! Sanity-free storytelling, that's the order of the day from me!

R&R and enjoy!

Scarlet and Raven

Chapter 1

"For the last time, Will," the Red Queen said in that horrible simpering voice of hers, "you need to learn this. Good things never happen to good people." She waved her hand in the direction of the nearby lever, and as the resident torture technician pulled on it, the chains on the rack stretched Will Scarlet's body ever closer to the breaking point. The only reaction that escaped from him was a small, strangled cry of pain, further muffled by his gritted teeth.

The Red Queen sneered down at him again. "This look is really not becoming, Will," she said. "Spare me the disgust of seeing your mutilations and just tell me what I want to know."

"I've endured your torture this long," said Will. "I think I'll keep on defying you. If only I could spit in your face right now."

"That can easily be arranged," said the Queen. "All you need is some water, no?" She crossed the room and picked up a pitcher and cloth. "Drink up," she said, slamming the cloth over Will's face and pouring the water onto the cloth. Instantly, Will started thrashing and spluttering as the Queen's simulated-drowning torture took effect.

Underneath the water attack, however, Will was able to hear something else - a faint metallic clinking from the chains around his ankles and wrists. He couldn't see what was going on, but somehow he knew. _It's about bloody time_, he thought dimly as the water continued to flow into his mouth and nose, impeding his breathing. Finally the Queen stopped, and Will moved his arms experimentally. Sure enough, they could move freely now, meaning that he had been set free after all. A less experienced man might have suspected that it was some trick of the Queen's, but Will knew better. In fact, he could easily see the faint shape of his rescuer crouching in the corner, the better to avoid being seen.

Quickly as possible, Will yanked the chains off their hooks and wrapped the one binding his wrists around the Red Queen's neck. "One move and you're dead," he whispered as menacingly as he could.

"You wouldn't dare," the Queen whispered back, equally menacingly.

"Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn't," said Will. "Either way, I'm gonna get out of here whether you like it or not. Rabbit!" He signaled the small quivering form in the corner, whose shadow shrank as he tossed a bundle of clothes Will's way. Then the Rabbit turned to the wall and started forming a hole with his palm, a swirling spiral of light that filled the room with an unearthly white glow.

"Good luck with your war, _Your Highness_," said Will, mock-saluting her as he leaped into the rabbit-hole and crash-landed on a pile of large hard lumps of stuff, all surrounded by a flimsy, noisy barrier of some kind. "Oof," he groaned. "That was murder on my balls, that was."

"Just get dressed already," said the Rabbit, dusting himself off as he clambered off the pile of lumps, which Will now noticed was contained in a large, open metal box. "A little bit of advice - don't ever let me see you naked again."

Will rolled his eyes as he donned his trousers. Then he stopped and sniffed the air. "What is that stench? I know it's not me." He sniffed his armpit and added, "Yeah, it's definitely not me."

"That would be the stuff you're sitting on, I'm afraid," the Rabbit said, taking off his rose-colored spectacles so he could clean them. "It's the trash of this world."

"You mean to tell me you landed me in a pile of garbage?"

The Rabbit put his spectacles back on. "I assume it beats being tortured by your ex-girlfriend?" When Will gave the barest of nods in response, the Rabbit continued, "Well, here you go."

"What are you gonna do now?" asked Will as he put his doublet back on. "You can't go back to Wonderland now, can you?"

"I'd like to see Anastasia try to stop me," said the Rabbit proudly. "She couldn't even stop me getting into her Fortress of Death."

"Don't call it that," said Will. "It's inaccurate. Nobody actually dies there."

"Given the chance, I'm sure the Queen would have made an exception for you," said the Rabbit.

"I suppose you're right," Will conceded as he slid out of the big metal box of garbage. "But honestly, where _are_ you going to go, Rabbit?"

The Rabbit shrugged and scratched one of his ears. "I hear Agrabah's lovely this time of year."

"I see," said Will. "Good luck, then, I guess. You're gonna need it."

"Same to you," said the Rabbit. "You have no idea the sort of stuff this world's got going on. Just don't come back until I come get you, got me?"

"How will you find me?"

The Rabbit winked. "The rabbit-holes have worldwide coverage in all realms," he said, as he made another hole in the wall behind the big metal box and jumped into it.

"Whatever that means," said Will, even though nobody else was around to hear. He looked around and realized he was standing on some kind of road, made of what looked like a bunch of gravel bits glued together with thick tar, bleached to a medium gray by long hours of sunlight exposure. In one direction lay a series of buildings in a veritable rainbow of colors, all two or three stories high, with metal contraptions sitting in spaces on the road, marked by white lines of paint. In the other direction lay a bigger version of this street, with more of these metal things racing up and down the street at speeds higher than any horse in Wonderland or Agrabah or even the Enchanted Forest were capable of.

Despite the fact that it looked less safe, Will decided to head for the bigger street. Luckily, there was a flat stone walkway running alongside the street, entirely devoid of metal contraptions, but with a few people walking up and down in both directions. Will started walking up the street, in a direction he suspected to be south, because the sun was setting to the left. _That is, if the directions in this world are the same as in Wonderland_, he thought.

Will walked on, up the street, finally finding a smaller road that he felt more comfortable traveling on because it was less busy, and any metal contraptions using it were traveling more slowly. But even that was not enough, because he soon found himself almost being hit by one of these contraptions, a sand-colored one with a symbol on the front vaguely resembling the letter "T." Will was forced to duck out of the way, and he ended up taking a major pratfall onto the stone walkway.

"Oh my God, I'm so sorry!" cried a female voice, as a brown-haired, pale-faced girl, wearing black clothes and a hard white shell of some kind covering her forearm and left hand, opened a door in the side of the metal contraption and ran over to Will, offering him her uncovered hand to help pull him up. "Are you okay, guy?"

"Yeah, I am." Will dusted off his clothes and took a proper look at the girl. "Who are you?" he asked.

"I like your accent," she said, rather than answer his question. "Where are you from?"

"Er...Enchanted Forest originally," Will said. "But I've lived in Wonderland for about five years."

"Did you say 'Wonderland?'" the girl said. "Wow. Really? What's it like?"

"You've heard of Wonderland?" Will asked.

"Only in stories," said the girl. "I've always wanted to go there, though, even if it is just fiction."

"Trust me, girl, it's all real," said Will. "Perhaps too much so. I had to leave or else the Red Queen would've killed me. My name is Will Scarlet, by the way."

"I'm Alice Kingsleigh," said Alice. "Come on inside, I'll get you some other clothes. If you're gonna be here a while, might as well blend in as best you can." She took Will's hand and led him past her sand-colored metal contraption into a sand-colored building, which had been blocked from view by a tall willow-like tree, and which Will had just realized was a house.


	2. Chapter 2

AN: I am most surprised at the number of reviews I've received so far for one chapter alone. Not sure I've had a story with that many people asking about it before! I'm also glad to see I'm not the only one who appreciates the chemistry between Will and Alice - normally I try to avoid shipping wars, but the writers of this show really seem to go out of their way to make Knalice seem like a viable relationship. Lots of tension there, which I hope to carry into my story. Now it is time to continue, and I hope you enjoy the new material!

But first, I wanted to feature a quote from last night's ep "Bad Blood," one that I liked a lot and actually inspired me to finalize the reason for Alice's broken arm. I will only reveal the basic circumstances of her injury here in this chapter, with more to follow because the broken arm is, in fact, very important to my story. But I'm getting WAY off topic here, so here's the quote!

"If she sees someone hurtin', she can't help but get rid of the pain. It's in her nature." -Will Scarlet

Chapter 2

Alice looked Will up and down, considering for a moment. "Lucky you, you're pretty much the same size as my brother," she said. "Some of his duds should fit you fine." She led him down a hallway to a bedroom, which Will surmised was that of Alice's brother. The walls were covered in posters for a strange-looking creature called "Spider-Man," who wore a skintight red and blue suit and mask with large, reflective triangular lenses over his eyes. At least, they were over the place where eyes would be on an ordinary human. Will didn't want to know what Spider-Man looked like underneath his mask. From the sound of it, he may well have been some kind of eight-eyed mutant with hair and pincers all over his face.

Will turned away from the posters and looked at Alice, who was busy trying to remove clothes from the closet. Because one of her arms wasn't working right, she was having considerable difficulty. "Here, let me help you," said Will, not wanting to see her struggle.

"Relax, I can handle it," said Alice. "I'm surprisingly good at doing things one-handed. Well, I should be, given that I've had this cast on for a month now."

"What happened, anyway?" asked Will. "To your arm, I mean."

Alice let out a quick, harsh laugh. "Some guy almost got himself hit by a car, and I pushed him out of the way. I got hit instead. Thankfully, the car was already slowing down, so I didn't get too badly hurt. Just this. Let me tell you, never let your arm smack into a glass window at even ten miles an hour. It will break and you will be pissed." She tossed a pair of midnight-blue pants, made of some coarse cloth, onto the bed, followed by a shirt with gray and purple stripes, and a plain black coat with a hood. She then bent down to grab a box marked "Converse," containing two black shoes with white toes and laces.

"That looks good," said Alice. "Okay, I'll just leave while you change. I'll get some food for you. Maybe pizza, I think there's still some left in the fridge." She left the room, and Will glanced down at the clothes Alice had lain out for him. None of them were particularly his style, but then again he wasn't exactly in Wonderland anymore. He got redressed quickly, leaving his old clothes piled on the floor in a not-so-neat way. (Alice's brother's closet was equally disorganized, so Will was sure she wouldn't mind seeing his own clothes that way.)

Despite what Alice had said, her brother's clothes did not fit Will very well at all. The shirt and jacket were reasonable, if a bit baggy, but the pants were very tight-fitting (and, being made of rough material, causing his legs to itch a lot) and sagged more than a bit at the waist. The shoes were the right size, but Will found it weird that they only reached the lower part of his ankle. They felt like incomplete boots, and he just wasn't used to the way they felt.

He told Alice as much, and she answered, "Well, these are actually the style here. You do wanna blend in as long as we're here, right?"

Will tried in vain to pull the pants completely up over his ass. "If you say so, I guess," he said.

"Well, sit down, the pizza's ready," said Alice. She handed Will a plate of pizza. He'd never heard of such a thing before, or seen anything remotely like it, but he was willing to give it a try because it smelled delicious. And sure enough, it was. Will wondered why in a land where everything was possible, they had yet to discover these pie-wedges of flatbread, covered in melted cheese, red sauce, thin-sliced tomatoes, small meatballs, and basil leaves.

"I take it you've never had this before?" asked Alice. "Guess there's not a lot of pizzerias in Wonderland. That sounds sucky."

"How do you know about Wonderland, anyway?" Will asked. "You've never been there, have you? Don't sound so excited. It's really not a very good place to go."

Alice raised her eyebrows. "But there's old stories about it from the 1800s. It's like an adventure-filled dream land, the way it's described."

"Old stories?" Will asked. "You mean, fictional stories?"

"So they'd have us think, I guess."

Will took another bite of pizza. "Who's _they_?"

"Just the generic group of people who think they have the right to run the world," said another voice. Will turned around and saw its owner, a thin brown-haired boy who looked a lot like Alice, and could only be her brother. "Hey, Raven," he said. "Who's this guy and why is he wearing my stuff?"

"Don't call me that, Jack," Alice said. "I don't do the Raven thing anymore."

"Don't dodge the question, _Raven_," said Jack, who clearly still wanted to press the issue. "Who is this guy?"

Will stood up and reached out to shake Jack's hand. "Name's Will Scarlet, former Knave of Hearts."

"Knave of Hearts?" Jack repeated, then burst out laughing. "Oh man, you finally get a boyfriend and he's got the same delusions as you? Well, lucky you, you got something in common with him."

Alice glared at her brother. "I can't believe I have to say this...he's not my boyfriend. And you shouldn't judge. If Mom and Dad knew about yours-"

"Like you'd really tell them anyway," Jack said in a horrible sneering voice that reminded Will strongly of the Red Queen. This thought caused Will's mind to drift back to the day when he'd first met the Red Queen, back when she was still a nice woman and not a power-grubbing witch...

* * *

_Four years earlier, in Wonderland..._

"Name?" asked the Red Queen. Her voice was polished and upper-class, but not nearly as grating and simpering as it would become when she got angry.

"Will Scarlet, Your Majesty."

"Previous occupation?"

"Merry Man in the Enchanted Forest."

"So you have cat-burglar skills." The Queen smiled. "That's perfect. I think I will need you."

"That's wonderful, Your Majesty." Will smiled back at her, politely. "Thank you very much."

The Queen turned to one of her underlings and beckoned him forward. "Take Mr. Scarlet to the vestry and suit him up. Then put him in the training camp." She turned back to Will. "Have you ever had to slay a dragon before, Mr. Scarlet?"

"No, Your Majesty."

"In that case, I think you will have a very thrilling experience indeed," said the Queen. "Good luck. Survive this and I might just make you my Knave of Hearts."

"Survive this?" Will asked.

"Didn't you hear? All the previous occupants were burned to death during their attempts to slay the dragon," said the Queen. "So, no pressure. Concentrate on attacking its weak point and you will certainly succeed."

"Thank you for the advice, Your Majesty," said Will. He turned to follow the underling to the vestry, all the while thinking, _Oh bloody hell. What am I doing?_


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

_Down in the ground, where the dead men go..._

The Rabbit emerged from his hole into a long, rough stone passageway lit by torches. It looked a hell of a lot like the underground areas of the Red Queen's Fortress of Death (the Rabbit didn't care what the Knave said, it was a perfectly apt name for the place), except it was operated by someone whom the Rabbit actually had loyalty to. This man had offered his family protection from the Queen in exchange for only one thing - being a good spy.

"Enter!" called the sharp voice of this man as the Rabbit knocked on a metal door. He went in and saw the tall, dark man gazing at the two cages that hung over a huge abyss far below, as well as a third cage that presently remained empty.

"I trust your mission was successful?" the man asked, clenching his cobra-shaped staff.

"Yes, it was, Jafar," said the Rabbit. "He's right where you wanted him to be. But are you certain they'll come back to Wonderland?"

Jafar nodded curtly. "Absolutely. This girl, this Alice...she's the one. I should know. I charmed her myself."

The Rabbit chuckled. "You have no idea how...odd...that sounds."

"Maybe where you're from, Rabbit." Jafar snorted. "And isn't that the pot calling the kettle black? That is the expression, correct?"

"Yes, it is," the Rabbit said. "I suppose you're right." He turned to leave, but he had one more question. "Is that chicken I smell?"

Jafar nodded again. "These prisoners are well-fed, I've always made sure of that."

"Chicken, though?" the Rabbit asked.

"They get a very lovingly well-prepared meal," said Jafar. "It does take a lot of preparation, you know. Especially since I have the bones removed from each one."

"Why would you-" A second too late, it dawned on the Rabbit. "Oh. Right."

"Yes, it's not called a 'wishbone' for nothing," said Jafar.

The Rabbit turned around again. "I suppose you're still trying to be nice to break them?"

"It'll take a lot more than nice treatment to get them to talk," said Jafar. "Equal parts pain and pleasure. Something the Queen has apparently failed to learn."

"Damn right," said the Rabbit, leaving at last.

* * *

_Meanwhile in the real world..._

"So where are you gonna go sleep?" Alice asked. "Do you have anywhere to go?"

Will shook his head. "I just got here about an hour ago. What do you think?"

Alice rubbed her chin thoughtfully. "Hmm. What if you hide in my closet? It's pretty big, and I've got a small futon in there you could use."

They went up to the closet to look at the accommodations, but Alice then shook her head as she realized the futon was, in fact, far too small for Will to fit on. It was even too small for herself, which was strange given that she had had it for only four years and she had been able to fit comfortably on it before.

"This isn't too bad," said Will. "Maybe if I fold myself up like this..." He curled up in a ball on top of the futon, but then fell off onto the floor. "Bloody hell. I feel like I'm trying to look up my own arse."

"Hold on a second," said Alice. "I got an idea." She led Will down the hall to her brother's room, where they removed a dark blue heavy blanket from a drawer. "It's a sleeping bag," said Alice. "It'll keep you nice and warm, don't worry."

Jack frowned at the sleeping bag. "Where are you having him sleep, exactly?" he asked, looking askance at Will.

"I'm putting him in the closet," said Alice.

Jack chuckled. "Don't let her get any bad ideas, buddy," he said, nudging Will's ribs.

Alice rolled her eyes, then left the room and headed back to hers. "All right," she said, laying the sleeping bag down on the floor of her closet. "It zips up so you can get a little more warmth thataway. Just pull it like this..." She demonstrated the zipper so Will could copy it himself later. "Oh, and the bathroom's this way," she added, pointing to a room next to hers. "It's kind of like an automatic chamber pot, just-"

"I think I can figure it out for myself, thanks," said Will. "We do have water closets in Wonderland, you know."

"Now that I didn't know," said Alice. "Just had to make sure."

At this point, a faint noise came from the other side of the house. "Dammit, that'll be my parents," Alice groaned. "Um, hide?"

She didn't need to tell Will twice. Several years of random dates had left him well aware of how protective some parents were of their darling little girls. He'd always assumed his black leather outfits were considered off-putting by said parents. So he ducked into the closet and slid into the sleeping bag, then zipped himself in. The zipper actually made a surprisingly funny sound, so he amused himself a bit by pulling the zipper open and closed repeatedly for a minute, until he heard the door opening as Alice's parents entered the house proper, forcing him to cease and desist so he wouldn't be heard.

A few minutes later, Alice came into the closet and whispered, "I'm gonna stay up for about an hour or so before I go to sleep. My alarm clock should wake you up in the morning, and tomorrow we'll go someplace where we can talk a little more about Wonderland. Okay?"

"Got it," said Will. He decided to take the opportunity to start sleeping right then and there. Too bad the people in the house made a considerable amount of noise.

* * *

_At this moment, in Wonderland..._

"'...and if you don't set them free within the week I will be forced to march on your fortress and that is a promise,'" dictated the Red Queen to Tweedle Dee. "Wonderful. I hope Jafar understands my power now. Thank you very much, Tweedle. You may leave."

Tweedle Dee bowed and left. As he did so, he muttered, _"Would it kill you to just send the Bandersnatch after him, Your Highness? A lot less human cost for us, no?_"

The Red Queen turned on her heel and retreated to her bedroom, where, as expected, her lover lay waiting for her. It was an odd reversal of the typical gender role - here the male was the one lying naked on the bed, covered in rose petals, and the female was the one who would mount him not-quite-so-gently.

Before she did so, however, the Queen couldn't resist one little snarky comment. "Oh, Cyrus, you are ever so derivative," she said. "But that's what I love about you anyway."

"As you wish, Your Highness," Cyrus said, reaching up to the Red Queen's hips to guide himself into her. "Every time."


End file.
